About

RoomToWrite is an organisation dedicated to encouraging aspiring and professional writers to escape domestic and other commitments for periods of intense writing or reading development.

Meetings are held in a variety of venues including the luxurious, aesthetically pleasing environment ofWhitworth Hall, with its deer park, walled garden and lake.

TUTORS

Wendy Robertson

Wendy Robertson is a professional writer who has published more than 20 novels, as well as regular articles and short stories. Her tutoring skills come from a long experience in formal and informal education, tutoring people of all ages and abilities. More recently these have been focused on specialized workshops in locations as diverse as colleges, community centres and even a womens’ prison, where she directed a Litfest Inside as part of the Durham Literature festival.

For ten years she was director, with Gillian Wales, of the Practice To Deceive national short story competition which later generated great success for some of the winners. She still works as a mentor for individual writers to help them reach the point of publication. She is delighted with three new writers who recently reached that goal. She evaluates individual writers’ work by post and judges their potential. In addition she has anthologised, edited, and published collections of other people’s writing including The Self Revealed , a collection of writing from prison.

It is intended that all of these skills and services will be offered in the RoomToWrite project.

Wendy says:  ‘Most of all I love to write – to generate stories that have something to say about me, about the intriguing elements and surprising factors of the world as I find it. Because I have been writing for more than twenty years, with a different novel every year, the world and the way I view it has changed and evolved. Each novel is unique unto itself.’

To find out more about Wendy, her world view and her books, visit her website www.wendyrobertson.com

Gillian Wales

Gillian Wales has recently retired as manager of Bishop Auckland Town Hall which, operates as an arts venue incorporating the Eden Theatre and the McGuinness Gallery together with the Hutchinson Library and the Tourist Information Office. In addition to programming the venue, Gillian was also group manager of libraries in the Bishop Auckland area and has a keen interest in reading and promoting contemporary fiction.

She originated the extremely successful literary programme, ‘Book It!’, which included book launches, writing and publishing workshops. She also ran the national ‘Novel Approach/Practise to Deceive’ writing competition for 10 years. Patrons included David Almond, Pat Barker, Terry Deary and Anne Fine. The first winner,Jonathan Tulloch, went on to develop his prize-winning short story, Season Ticket, into a full-length novel which was subsequently filmed as ‘Purely Belter’.

Gillian has researched, co-written and published three well received books on mining art. The latest is The Quintessential Cornish

Gillian was a director of Mslexia, the  highly-praised  literary magazine for women who write.

Avril Joy

Avril Joy is a published novelist and former Head of Learning and Skills at HMP Low Newton a women’s prison. She has over twenty years experience in working with groups in the varying roles of teacher, facilitator and trainer. She has recently put this experience to good use running local writing workshops including a six session group for novel writers. In August 2008 she gave up her position in the Prison Service to concentrate solely on her career as a writer.

Avril says:‘I am very excited about RoomToWrite. When I finally ‘got out’ of prison writing became my main occupation. However running writing workshops has also become an important and growing part of my new life. I am passionate about workshopping and always feel at home in group of writers: simply the best people. This is where I believe I can share some of the things I’ve learned, and am still learning, on my own rocky road to publication. I believe in the power of inspiring workshops, as it was in such a weekend workshop, run by Wendy Robertson and the late Julia Darling that I began my novel The Sweet Track, published by Flambard Press in 2007. If I can do it, so can you! I am currently working on a novel about a young woman in prison but have also been writing stories and poems, keeping a journal and developing two blogs

You can read them at www.avriljoy.com and www.onthewhitepage.com